Selling More Than Just Tools: A Personal Essay on Letting Go

(This article was originally published February 11, 2023, in the Southern Spice section of the Times-Georgian)

“It is essential to have good tools, but it is also essential that the tools should be used in the right way.” ―Wallace D. Wattles.

This morning opened up wide and blue and clear. A perfect spring day for a yard sale.

Juxtaposed against this glorious backdrop was the sober, underlying reason for our yard sale: we were selling my dad’s tools today.

I wasn’t prepared for the visceral attachment I would feel toward my father’s physical possessions, as though they were extensions of himself and that getting rid of them would represent one more piece of him — gone. But I guess I should have been.

The day we cleaned out the storage shed nearly destroyed my mom and me. As we opened the old wooden door to the dark and cramped workspace, the familiar smells of grass clippings, gasoline, and oil overwhelmed me. The scents, decidedly masculine and comforting, opened up and released a floodgate of memories.

My dad was always tinkering — “piddling,” we often called it. A broken lawn mower equaled a personal challenge to his mechanical skills. An old riding lawn mower that my ex-husband proclaimed “would never run” found new life when my dad installed a “kill switch” on it. (Mom’s neighbor pronounced my dad a “genius” when she gave that mower to him.)

Several months after my father’s passing, my mother decided to have this yard sale. She had announced numerous times that she was not going to use most of Pop’s extensive collection of tools and that she might need the space.

A positive step forward, I thought.

As the day unfolded, we discovered that for every tool we sold, a story went along with it.

The impact driver was one of the first tools to go.

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“Only used once,” my mom said to her first customer of the day who had picked it up. She then launched into a story of how she and my dad had completely redone the back deck themselves. The story included a recollection of how my mom had fallen through a loose board and ended up flat on the ground beneath the deck. My amused father managed to step on the board as my mother was going down before it could hit her, cartoon-style in the face, saving her from a possible concussion and a certain black eye.

An older gentleman stopped by and inquired about the history of the equipment we had for sale. He picked up a telescoping magnetic pickup tool.

Honestly, I had no idea these things even existed. I mean, a “telescoping magnetic pickup tool”? What the heck even is that? To be fair, my dad had an unhealthy relationship with Harbor Freight Tools and stockpiled enough gadgets to build a treehouses, tanks, or

My mom went back to the deck remodeling story and told us how my dad had dropped a drill bit between the cracks. My 65 year old mother lay on her belly and extended the pickup tool to find it all under the watchful eye of my father who, I’m sure, took great pleasure in holding the light and directing her every movement.

As it turns out, people really want to buy tools at yard sales. The rest of our (cute) merchandise went relatively untouched.

The highlight of our day happened when Natalie strode up the driveway with purpose. Confident and direct, she looked at what was left and commented on how great the prices were. We didn’t dare tell her that the sale was a part of our grief and healing, another marker of our loss. We couldn’t bear to heap our sadness onto her. We let her have this small Saturday morning victory.

She was excited. She and her fiancé are renting a house down the road from my mom.

They can’t afford much.

Natalie went and dragged sweet, timid Donnie back so they could “spruce up their yard.”

He protested: “We don’t need all of this stuff.”

He was overruled. Natalie bought the remaining tools and a saw. Donnie tried to push back on the saw. Didn’t work. She told him not to worry, she’d be the one using all of it anyway.

My dad, if he were looking down in that moment, would have first complimented my mom for getting as much money as she could from his tools (my dad’s frugality is legendary). Then, I think maybe he would have said what a nice couple Natalie and Donnie were and that if anyone was going to get his stuff, it should be them. They deserved it, a hand up in the world.

He was, after all, the most lovable grumpy old man we ever knew.

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